


Bury Me Deep

by waxjism



Series: Bury Me Deep/In Silence [1]
Category: NSYNC
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2001-03-06
Updated: 2001-03-06
Packaged: 2017-10-06 09:10:34
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,046
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/52038
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/waxjism/pseuds/waxjism
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff"><p>song lyrics from kid rock, U2, fiona apple, headstones, linda perry, placebo</p></blockquote>





	Bury Me Deep

_everything's been fine since you've been gone_   


  
Joey and JC live in Justin's house. They are leasing it from Lynn Harless. Keeping it in one piece, they say. It's a mausoleum, Chris thinks, but doesn't say. Unless he's drunk, and then only to Lance, who doesn't really care.

Chris thinks, on bad days, that he should be living in Justin's house. What the hell are Joey and JC doing there? They could be happy as little lovebirds someplace else. They've got each other, haven't they?

_we've gone adrift, but we're still floating_

Chris calls Joey in the morning, at the ass-crack of dawn. He suspects Joey thinks he calls to check on JC. Chris just wants to know if the freak has killed himself yet. Joey is telling him about how JC still won't eat or go outside. So. Not dead yet, just working on it. "Why is he still like this?" Chris says, not sounding too pissed off or anything. Not resenting JC and his fucked-uppedness. "It's not like he and Justin were such buddy-buds, you know? Not like they talked."

Then he knows why he called, and it's not because of fucking JC or JC's stupid eating disorder. "Two years to the day, today," he says. The calendar is open on his desk. He hasn't marked the day, but it's not as if he's going to forget.

"Are you coming over?" Joey asks. Chris considers it. Hmm? Spend the day watching JC staring at him like his very existence is an offence, or sit at home getting completely shitfaced? Tough one.

He keeps his voice neutral when he says, "No. I don't-- I'll just get drunk and try not to..." and hates himself when he can't finish the sentence.

"Think about Justin," Joey says, of course. Joey can talk about it. Joey's the strong one. Fuck.

Chris taps the calendar with a fingernail. The polish has chipped. Tap. June. Tap. The 6th. Tap. Two years today. "Yeah. He's dead. Face it, blah blah blah. He was probably dead that night already."

"You should come here, Chris."

Joey sounds disgustingly paternal. When did he grow up? Oh, duh. Sorry. After babysitting the Calista-wannabe for two years, anyone would grow up. "Why? Do you worry about me? Does JC fucking worry about me?"

"I worry about you, yeah. Don't know about JC. He's not--"

"He's fucked in the head, Joey. He was then, and he hasn't gotten better."

"Come here, Chris."

Sigh. "Okay."

_you say love is a hell you cannot bear  
I say give me mine back and then go there, for all I care_

JC is sitting by the kitchen counter, a cigarette clamped between the index and long finger of his left hand, drinking spring water and nibbling listlessly on a very small piece of dry toast. Joey fusses over him like a distressed mother hen. Chris just wants to slap them both.

He refrains from baiting JC too much, even though he really wants to. But Joey's giving him the evil eye behind JC's back, so Chris bites his tongue and plays nice. When he first came in, he heard JC's voice clearly say, "Don't wanna see him," and Joey, ever-hopeful, saying,

"You should. You two should stop hating each other."

"I don't hate him." Petulant much, JC? I hate _you_.

"You do."

"So we'll have a big old gathering? Invite Lance, why don't you?" It sounds like JC is trying to be all tough and sarcastic, but instead it comes out whiny.

"I'll call him," Joey says, and then Chris stops eavesdropping and walks in, and JC almost _snarls_ at him. Chris snarls back. Even bares his teeth a little to see JC shudder and choke on his toast.

Joey talks to Lance. Chris amuses himself by staring at JC. Then he hears Joey say, "--two years ago. We're going to-- no. I know. Well, it matters to us. Chris is here, too. We don't _know_ that, Lance--"

JC gets up and leaves.

Joey hangs up. "I'd appreciate it if you didn't go out of your way to mess with his head, Chris," he says. He sounds tired.

"I didn't do anything. Where did he go? The basement?"

"He goes to the studio."

That's a surprise. "What, he's working? Recording? Writing? Doing something constructive?"

"Not really. He doesn't talk about it. Maybe." Joey's looking so old right now. Chris hates JC even more for taking Joey with him down his self-loathing downward spiral.

They sit quietly then, and through the half-open door to the basement, they hear Justin sing _'you said it made you believe in no man, no cry--'_. JC is playing their old records. The chocolate chip cookie Chris is eating suddenly tastes like mud.

"Fuck," he says. Thinks about getting drunk. Decides to do so at first opportunity. Like, as soon as he gets out of here.

"Yeah," Joey says.

"Does he do that a lot?" Meaning: how the fuck do you live like this, Joe?

"Every day."

"Do you think--" Fuck. He should be able to talk about it. Two years. Two fucking years. "Do you think he's dead?"

"JC doesn't."

"Like I could miss that. Besides, JC isn't exactly--"

"Chris."

"Yeah, yeah. I know."

"So."

Joey's trying to change the subject. Chris can't think of anything good, so he doesn't help. Space Cowboy comes on. Chris finds himself singing along to the stupid refrain. Yippie-yi-yay. Motherfucker. He bites his tongue slowly. Clicks the stud against his front teeth.

Joey looks up. "You got your tongue pierced?"

"Yeah. A month ago." Joey looks at his face intently. Chris can see him counting rings and bolts. Joey still looks like he did back in the merry days of NSync. "It's for fellatio," Chris says. Joey doesn't get the reference. There used to be a time when Joey could recite all of Pulp Fiction along with Chris.

"Right. Like the ... uh. The hair. Good look for you."

"Liar." He always thought blue was his colour. "Had to lose the image, dude. I'm the front man. Gotta be punk."

"I think the collar takes care of that. Very Sid Vicious."

"Yeah." And that's it for that topic. Chris keeps on clicking. Joey gets them beers, and they sit in silence.

_where does it go when it's gone, and where does it end?_

Lance is a no-show. He calls and says he's beat and going to bed. Joey sounds very dry and restrained when he tells Chris and JC what Lance said. JC looks like he might cry. He's starting his second pack of cigarettes. He came back from his crypt/studio when he'd played No Strings Attached twice all the way through. Chris and Joey had made pasta and eaten it, all the while accompanied by Justin's voice. Not exactly a cheerful meal. JC is on a liquid diet.

_holding him down and pulling off his wings_

It's been hours of non-stop fun at Chez Co-dependence, and Chris has had enough. He pushes away from the table. Throws a "been real, seeya," over his shoulder and makes for the door. Joey doesn't even try to stop him, just mutters, "yeah. Nice to see you again, Chris."

He stops in the hall. For some reason, he didn't think about it when he came in - maybe because he was too busy hating JC - but the white-painted wall is just glaring at him now. If he squints, he can still see the spot where they covered the blood with new paint. It might just be a hallucination, though. Acid flashback. Whatever. Coming down the stairs in the morning, this morning two years ago, hung over from the big par-tay last night, headache like a sonofabitch, and seeing the bloody handprint shouting its bright-crimson hello! from the white wall.

He puked right there on the stairs. Then he woke everybody up - except Justin, obviously - and called 911.

Now he opens the front door and steps out into the sweet-smelling, balmy night. He takes a deep breath. Freezes. Someone sits motionlessly on the steps of the porch.

"Hey, what are you doing here? You--" and then he's taken the two steps necessary to see the stranger's face, and it's not a stranger, after all. Even though it's murky, even though his face is hidden under a cascade of tangled, snake-twisting dreadlocks, Chris can recognise Justin. And the entire world makes two lightning-fast backflips. And splits down the middle.

Chris sees two possible futures: one where he reacts like a normal person does - whoops with joy, gives the kid a big hug, yells for Joey and JC. Is happy.

And another where he is filled with such an eruption of black anger that he doesn't even see his own fist fly out and smack into Justin's face.

When the world is done with its backflipping antics, Chris looks down. Justin is still sitting quietly on the porch. Chris sits down next to him.

"Hey," he says.

"Hey," Justin says. His voice sounds the same. He's twisting his hands in his lap. There's something wrong there, something wrong. Chris is afraid to ask or look closer. "I didn't know who'd be living here. I was..."

He trails off, and Chris swallows and says, "how long have you been here?"

"Just half an hour, I think. I was gonna ring on the door. I was ... preparing myself." He lifts his right hand to pull at his dirty dreads, and fuck, fuck, fuck: the ring finger on his left hand is missing. It's just gone, cut off roughly right above the knuckle. The pasta dinner rolls lazily in Chris' stomach.

"What happened?" he asks quickly. Justin looks at him, just a short glance, and then down at his lap, at the hand lying there like a bird with a broken wing.

"I'm fine," he says. Then he shrugs, as if he just realised that wasn't the answer to the question. "I think they were going to ask for a ransom or something. I don't know."

Chris bites down hard on his questions. Justin seems tired and still flighty as a rare bird. Some scruffy little thing that birdwatchers all over the world fall over themselves to see. Maybe he'll just take off into the night if he feels threatened. Justin doesn't seem entirely real yet. He might be a ghost.

"We thought you were dead," he says instead. It's not the perfect thing to say, but it seems important that Justin understands. That they thought about him. That they hurt.

"I figured you would," Justin says. That's all, and Chris sees the possibility of violence again. He's having a tough time not yelling at Justin, shaking him and yelling, 'don't you see what you did to us?!'

But Justin is as broken as the rest of them, and it wouldn't help anyone to drive him off again. It wouldn't help at all, even though Chris really would like to chop off some more appendages right now. How fucked up is it that he wants to kill whoever hurt Justin and then hurt him himself in the same thought?

"Are you gonna go inside?" he asks, and Justin sits so still, so frozen that Chris is tempted to poke him to see if he's still alive. "Hey. Are you gonna go--"

"I don't know."

"Ooookay." He looks around, looks at the quiet houses, the quiet street. It's ten o'clock, maybe. "Are you gonna sleep out here?"

"I don't know." He's back to wringing his hands. Chris notices that he has a tendency to hide the missing finger. "Who lives here? You?"

"No," Chris says. He's not so angry right now, so he reaches out impulsively and takes Justin's hand. The broken one. Justin freezes again, but lets him. "Joey and JC."

"Are they...?"

"Screwing? Don't know. I guess. Or not. Hard to say."

A moment of silence. Justin's hand is cold in his. It feels weird, what with the missing finger. Chris thinks he might be able to get used to it, though.

Justin's peering at him through the tangles of his hair. "Um," he says after a while, "what's with the, uh, the collar?"

Chris touches his collar. He's forgotten about it. He opens his mouth to show Justin the stud in his tongue. Justin cracks up, laughs for about five seconds, and then falls abruptly silent, as if someone turned off the sound.

"I'm in a punk band," Chris mutters, suddenly a little embarrassed. Not like it's the first time it's occurred to him that all this acting out might be happening a tad late in his life. Or too early for a mid-life crisis. Then he looks at Justin, who looks so Seattle 1992 that he could be the fourth member of Nirvana, and it's okay.

"Come inside," Chris blurts, surprising himself. He doesn't really want to - what? - share this with Joey or JC. Especially not with JC, who looks at Chris like he's dirt and is all about his own personal mini-melodrama. Eating disorder. Right.

"I'm not--"

"It's just Joey and JC." _Just_. Right, right. Chris can't even begin to imagine what JC's reaction will be. He feels suddenly protective of Justin.

"Look, Chris--" Justin's trying to pull back his hand, but Chris hangs on, almost desperately. Justin's hand is large and solid, and warming up now, and he doesn't want to let go of it. He holds on so tightly that he feels the bones grinding against each other under the rough skin. Does the amputated finger still hurt?

"Don't--" Don't _be afraid_. Don't _go_. Don't. He hauls Justin closer by the hand, closer, until Justin's almost in his lap. "Don't."

"Don't," Justin says, almost simultaneously, and he struggles helplessly, stubbornly. His hair falls back from his face, and Chris sees it clearly for the first time. The streetlight shines bright and unforgiving on the familiar-strange angles.

"Oh, god," Chris breathes and lets Justin go. Justin pulls his hair back over his face like a blackout curtain, but Chris has already seen enough. The scar runs down all the way from Justin's eyebrow to his jaw, pulling down the eye and the corner of his mouth in a droopy grimace. It's hideous. Someone took their time with it, pinned him down and cut him up like a lab specimen. The edges are jagged and rough, as if some not quite competent doctor sewed it up with horsehair and a darning needle.

I wanted to hurt him, Chris thinks. Guilt's a great addition to the other confused emotions. _Hi, howdy, I'm Guilt. I'm sure I'll fit right in. How are ya guys?_

Justin's pulling back, pulling himself together, preparing to take flight. That can't happen. Chris grabs him, and the sudden panic makes him rougher than he intended. "Justin--" he says, half-pleading, half-soothing.

"I don't want to," Justin mumbles, and Chris reels him in again, folds him into his lap, wraps his arms around him. Justin is awkward at first, all trembling elbows and knees, but then he relaxes all at once and sags against Chris.

Chris pats his back, strokes his hair, whispers, "shhh, shhh, it's okay," into his ear. Smells dirty skin and dirty clothes and old, stale grease and old stale smoke, and tries to imagine how Justin has been living all this time. It doesn't mesh with his memory of a boy with a big thing for creature comforts.

Justin's hands are scrabbling at his back, pulling at his shirt. His face is suddenly right next to Chris', his eyes huge and dark and unblinking. Or his eye is huge, rather. The left one doesn't open as wide as the right.

Chris closes his eyes for a second. Looking at the scar makes his own face hurt. But then he opens them again and holds Justin still and kisses his face. When Justin doesn't pull back, he kisses his mouth, too.

"I love you," he tells him. It's meant to sound reassuring, possibly brotherly, but it comes out desperate. He adds, too quickly, "we all do, Justin." It might be true.

He kisses him again, and gets up. Justin doesn't protest.

_you knocked me out, and I will never be the same  
I pushed you over, and here we will remain_

He stands behind Chris in the hall like the grunge ghost of Christmas past. Chris can smell him. He can also feel his own pulse hammering almost-arrhythmically in his head like a tiny, drunken mariachi band.

"Chris?" Joey says, coming in from the living room. "Did you forg--"

The silence in the hall is sudden and all encompassing. Chris can't hear Justin breathe. He can't hear himself breathe, because he isn't. Breathing.

Then Joey blinks. Blinks again. Chris realises he's trying to stop tears. Funny. It never even occurred to Chris to cry. Justin's eyes are dry like his, too. But Joey is dissolving. Chris can't tell if it's from relief or grief or joy or what.

"It's--" Joey says. He can't seem to make the sounds come out right. Chris catches Justin's hand and pulls him with him. Joey isn't going to be a problem.

"Fuck. Kiddo," Joey stutters, and he's reaching for Justin, and Justin only flinches back for a second - a second when Chris wants to pull him away and keep him safe - and then he relaxes and lets Joey hug him. Welcomes it, even. Joey's making incoherent noises into Justin's hair.

Then Chris sees JC coming down the hall, and all hell breaks loose.

He thinks, oh shit. Oh, shit.

JC looks like a Doberman on a choking leash. Chris sees him drop his half-smoked cigarette on the floor. It'll scar the wood, he thinks absently.

Justin shrinks back. Chris would, too, if someone aimed a stare like that on him.

Then he realises that JC is hitting Justin, hitting him in the face like a hysterical woman - who's hysterical? JC is growling. Rabid dog. Justin is backed up against the wall, his hands helplessly in front of his face. Chris can see something building in there, though, and he thinks Justin may have been through too much to let himself be abused like this for long. And if he snaps--

The thought doesn't bear completion, and Chris grabs JC's bony shoulder with all the strength he has and spins him away from Justin. He honestly means to just get JC off Justin, nothing else, but somehow his hand gets away from him, just escapes, honestly, and before he really knows what happened, he's clocked JC a good one right in the jaw. He feels the impact sting his knuckles and rattle his bones. JC falls. His head makes a dull thud when it hits the floor.

Chris has been in a great many bar fights. It's sort of a hobby. He's got a good eye for it, so he can dodge Joey's punch. And get a few of his own in with the same movement. Joey isn't much of a fighter. He just doesn't have enough anger in him. Chris does.

And then it sort of dawns on him - like it didn't before, somehow; he'd just gone into barroom brawl mode and merrily punched away - that this is Joey he's pounding at, these are Joey's hands twisting his collar and trying to choke him. This is Joey staring at him with wild eyes in a bloody face.

"Oh-- Fuck," and he lets go, lets Joey get that last punch. Joey can't throw a punch to save his life. Thank god for that.

His head spins and his mouth feels swollen and hot. He blinks away some annoying tears - Joey caught him right on the nose, and it smarts even though the punch was badly timed - and tries to see what Justin's doing, how Justin's doing, where Justin's going.

He's going out the door, for fuck's sake, and Chris forgets about Joey and JC and punching friends in the face. He finds his legs, and catches Justin with his hand on the doorknob.

"Don't go," he says. It's simplest that way. Justin's face is hard when he turns around.

"They don't want me," he says. His voice is hard, too.

Chris pulls a hand through his hair. The other one's still twisted in the sleeve of Justin's ratty grease-grey tee shirt. "I want you," he says.

He should feel like an idiot saying that. It's so utterly melodramatic and ... blatant. It's not something he's used to saying. He doesn't feel like an idiot, though. He's just shit-scared that Justin will slap his hand away and walk out that door.

Justin doesn't. He just leans his back against the wall and hides his face behind his hair. His shoulders are shaking. Chris rubs one of them.

"Are you-- um." _Are you okay?_ seems sort of a stupid thing to ask. Like, duh - he's not okay. He's pretty far from okay.

Chris looks around, just half an inch from frantic. Joey is trying to pick JC off the floor. JC's jaw seems to be swelling already, but his eyes are wild.

"Is he cool?" Chris asks Joey.

"No, he's not fucking cool," Joey snaps. "You fucking punched him."

"He was--" Whatever. What's the purpose with arguing points they already basically agree on? "Sorry."

"Yeah, I'm sorry too."

"I'm sorry," Justin pipes in. They all look at JC, who's stopped rolling his eyes like a mad horse. He's clinging to Joey like a rock climber to a cliff face.

He looks back at them. Looks Chris in the eye for the first time in a long time. Visibly pulls himself together. Swallows. "Um ... sorry," he mutters.

_We're all sorry_, Chris thinks, and a giggle escapes him. It takes him by surprise, this sudden need to laugh it off. He tries to hold it down, but it's too late. Once laughter has built up a certain velocity, it's unstoppable. _This one's about to derail, captain_, and that was all she wrote.

He leans heavily on Justin and lets it all out.

_let's not drag out the details, salt the wounds  
what good would it do?_

Ten minutes later, they all sit around the kitchen table. Chris steals a cigarette from JC. After a couple of beats, Justin does, too. Joey stares at them in exasperation and takes one for himself. They puff away in silence for a while. There are squinting eyes and pained winces aplenty. Joey coughs. His nose has stopped bleeding, but it still looks a little swollen. JC is holding a bag of frozen peas over his jaw.

"Hm," Joey says when he's painstakingly smoked his cigarette down to the filter. The rest of them have settled on chain-smoking as a coping mechanism. Chris has never needed the comfort of inhaling-exhaling-nicotine-rush quite this desperately before. Well, not since the 6th of June two years ago.

"Hm," Joey says again.

"What?" Chris lights another. Maybe he could smoke two at once. Three. Five!

"We should call Lance."

Right. Yeah. Lance. "Oh."

"I can do it--"

"No, I'll call him," Chris interrupts. He's on top of this now. Justin is next to him; he's pulled his chair so close that his hair is brushing Chris' shoulder. Chris feels empowered. He can talk to Lance. He tries to make his face look reassuring, but it hurts, so he settles for neutral.

Pause. Silence. Justin stubs out his smoke.

"Hm," Joey says, once again. "The phone's over there."

"Oh."

Lance picks up after nine rings. His voice is terse when he says, "Hello?"

"Lance. Chris. We--" He chokes on that. What the fuck is he going to say? "Uh. It's Justin--"

"It's midnight, Chris," Lance says. His voice is cold and deceptively reasonable. "I have a job. I was asleep."

"Listen to me, man! It's Justin. He's alive."

Dead, freezing silence on the other end.

"Lance? What the fuck?" and then Joey's next to him and picks the phone from his hand.

"Lance? It's Joey - look, it's not just Chris--"

They can all hear Lance scream - and Lance _never_ screams - "FUCK YOU! HE'S DEAD!"

"Wh--" Joey starts, but the _slam_ of the receiver echoes loudly, and apparently hell has frozen over and the demons are about to take up snowboarding, because Chris cannot for his life remember Lance ever hanging up on anybody. Not even phone salesmen.

"So," he says into the shocked silence. "I think he took it rather well."

_it kinda went like this  
stay with me  
stay with me  
stop_

There seems to be nothing to say. Sure there is something - they need to talk things over, they do. But Chris isn't going to be the one to bring it up. Whatever it is. Justin is flagging, his chin sinking almost to his breastbone before he snaps his head up again. Joey is absently stroking JC's arm. Chris feels like his lungs are wallpapered with smoke, but he still wants another toke. It gives him something to do. Stops him, maybe, from absently stroking Justin's arm.

Why does he need to stop himself, though? Justin is tired and dirty, but he's still Justin. Justin never turned touches away.

It occurs to him that Justin may be tired and dirty, but those are easy things to fix.

"You wanna take a shower?" he asks. Justin nods sharply. Jesus. He's been afraid to ask. It's his own fucking house, and he's afraid to ask to use the facilities. He's still hiding his face - ducking his head and making sure there's always a thick, greasy tangle of hair blocking insight. Joey and JC have seen the ... thing, the thing in his face, but it's still sensitive. It's almost like the wound is still bleeding and needs to be dressed.

_confiscate  
razor blade_

"The bed in the big guest room is made," Joey says. "You can--"

"I'll stay with him."

_confiscate  
hey_

The guestroom is white and pristine. Justin was always oddly fond of white rooms. He probably thought he was Puff Daddy. He's switched allegiances now. He might not like white anymore.

_it kinda went like this_

Justin takes almost an hour in the shower. And then half an hour to dry his hair. Chris can hear the dryer buzz and buzz and buzz. He's sitting on the bed, not entirely sure what to do with himself. He has no idea what Justin wants. He doesn't have more than the most rudimentary idea of what he wants himself.

_Stay with me  
Stay with me_

"I didn't... My clothes. Were dirty." Justin wears a towel. He's got his arms crossed over his chest. He never used to be body conscious.

"I can go scavenge Joey's--"

"Yeah."

_stop_

When he gets back, Justin's out like a candle. On top of the covers, the towel slipping precariously. Chris sits by his side. Justin has lost weight; the carefully gym-built muscles have melted away to leave skin and bones and tendons, hard edges and jutting angles.

Chris covers him with a blanket and stays. An hour later, he realises he's sitting a vigil. Justin breathes softly and whimpers in his sleep.

_stop  
I forgot where I put it_

"Chris? Chris? Chris?"

"Five more minutes, come o--" and he's wide awake. Five minutes be damned. Justin sits by his side. He's turned off the light, but there's a moon, and it paints his bony chest and shoulders with cold light. "What?"

"I ... I couldn't ... sleep." He's saying something else, too. Something underneath those stuttered words. Chris' body is sleep-languid, but his brain is ticking away, hamster in a cage.

"Justin," he says, and Justin's stretching out next to him, naked in the moonlight. Chris wants to touch that silver-painted skin, and can't think of a reason not to.

"Yes," Justin whispers.

_it went  
like this it  
stay with me_

He finds more scars. Traces them with his fingertips, gently, gently. Justin breathes slowly and doesn't try to stop him.

"What happened?" Chris has to ask. He's lying next to Justin, letting his mouth follow the path of his fingers. He whispers the question to the starkly outlined slats of Justin's ribs.

"I climbed out-- I escaped." Deep breath, swallow, shudder. Chris feels it with his lips. Feels every fluttering heartbeat. "The glass. I cut myself."

Chris doesn't realise he's crying until he tastes the salt of his own tears on Justin's clean, still-smooth skin.

_I can't remember where I put it  
swallow_

He wakes once in the night and feels Justin's breath tickle his neck. He's cold. The sheets are a tangle around their legs. He rearranges them slowly. Justin doesn't wake up; he's sleeping like the dead. Still, Chris feels like he's trapped something wild in this room.

He goes to sleep again, and feels like he's wasting time.

_scatter the ashes one more time for me_

In the morning, Justin is gone. Chris lies alone in the bed, smelling his scent still on the slightly stale guestroom sheets. The dent in the pillow next to him is long cold.

After a while, he goes down to the kitchen. Joey and JC are eating breakfast. Well, Joey's eating his breakfast. JC is drinking and smoking his.

Joey lifts an eyebrow. Chris nods. "Yeah, he took off."

"Figures," Joey says. JC drops ash on the tabletop and pokes it around with a fingernail. He's not looking at Chris. That's nothing new. Chris is relieved.

"Do you think he'll be ... okay?" Joey asks, tentatively. Chris isn't sure why he asks. Not like Chris knows what happens in Justin's head. Not like anyone knows. Even Justin, probably.

"I think," he says after a while, tasting the thought before he spits it out into the air between them, "I think when you're used to running, you can't stop even when you want to go home."

"Fuck," JC mutters and stubs out his cigarette in the overflowing ashtray. He's gone in the blink of an eye, the doorframe rattling in his wake.

"Think _he'll_ be okay?" Chris asks. Joey gets up and empties the ashtray. The kitchen is rank with the ghosts of a thousand Lucky Strikes.

"I think," Joey says softly, after he sits down again, "that when you're used to hiding, you can't stop even when you _are_ home."

**Author's Note:**

> song lyrics from kid rock, U2, fiona apple, headstones, linda perry, placebo


End file.
